JOSHUA HAGGARD’S DAUGHTER

LONDON ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.

JOSHUA HAGGARD’S DAUGHTER

A Novel

BY THE AUTHOR OF

‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’

ETC. ETC. ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

LONDON JOHN MAXWELL AND CO. 4 SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET 1876 [All rights reserved]

THIS STORY IS DEDICATED

TO

CAPTAIN THE HON. JOHN CARNEGIE, R.N.

IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

OF

HIS KINDLY INTEREST IN THE AUTHOR’S WORK

AND OF

HIS HEARTY COÖPERATION IN THE

OPENING SCENE.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

[Pg 1]

JOSHUA HAGGARD’S DAUGHTER

CHAPTER I. THE CRUEL CRAWLING FOAM.

There was darkness over the land—darkness that might be felt. In the midst of the ripe warm harvest-time, when all things were at their fairest, and the farmers about Combhaven were congratulating each other on the glorious weather, the storm came: a strange bluish blackness overspread the sky—metallic, tempest-charged, not one cloud or many clouds, but a darkening of the face of heaven. It was like a sudden twilight at noon.

‘It mun be a ’clipse, I think,’ said old Jabez Long, the fisherman, contemplative of that awful horizon yonder, where one streak of copper-coloured light made a narrow rent between sea and sky.

[Pg 2]

‘’Clipse, man!’ cried his neighbour; ‘how can it be a ’clipse, when there ain’t none in the almanick? It’s more like a judgment than a ’clipse, to my mind—a judgment agen the farmers for making bread so dear last Chrisselmas. Sarve ’em right if their corn’s drownded afore they can get it under cover.’

There was no rain yet, but when the rain came by and by, it would be a flood, thought that little group of awe-stricken fishermen gathered in front of the King of Bells public-house, at the fishermen’s end of Combhaven.

‘Look at the sea,’ exclaimed Jabez, pointing seaward.

It had a curious look, the ocean—that sea which in summer time was wont to seem an emerald lake dappled with purple shadows. To-day the water was a dull red, darkened to indigo here and there. There was a strong ground-swell, and the sea heaved like a passionate bosom stirred with deepest anger. White surf came creeping up the sand, and with every receding wave there rose a roar like distant thunder.

[Pg 3]

‘An angry sea,’ cried Jabez. ‘I hope the young Squire won’t try to come in from Clovelly upon such a tide as this.’

‘Has he gone to Clovelly?’ asked Mike Durran, the younger of the two men. Both were old and gray and rugged, and had a look of having aged rather from hard weather than from the flight of years. Time had crawled for these villagers, winters and summers creeping slowly on their sluggish course; much labour, little pleasure. They must have felt a century old at least.

‘Yes, he sailed yesterday morning, and was to be back to-day. Him and Jack and the lad Peter; not enough of ’em to manage that clumsy old tub of his, to my mind. He’ll get into trouble some day, I’m afeard.’

‘Money’s scace with him, I’m thinking,’ said Mike.

‘Money’ll never be anything but scace while the old Squire’s alive,’ answered Jabez. ‘There’s money enough and to spare hid away somewheres; but nobody’ll ever see the colour of it while he’s alive.’

[Pg 4]

‘Not they,’ groaned Mike Durran; and there was a general groan from the little group of idlers, by way of tribute to the Squire.

‘Hard upon everybody,’ said Jabez.

‘Hardest of all upon his own flesh and blood,’ said another man. ‘His cruelty drove his second son to sea.’

‘Arnold,’ said Jabez. ‘Ah, a fine lad that! I remember ’im; a fine out-spoken lad, with a kind word for every one.’

‘Ah, he were the right sort, he were,’ said Mike; ‘not like Mr. Oswald. He haven’t a word to throw at a dog, wrapped up in his-self, and proud as Lucifus; and as for the colour of his money—well, I never see it.’

This implies the deepest depth of unpopularity—a man unable or unwilling to give.

At this juncture there came a silence in the little assembly, and all eyes were turned in the same direction to look at a man who came round the sharply-jutting cliff which ran out seaward into a dangerous reef, and cut off this straggling bit of sea-shore from the tidy little town that nestled in a cleft [Pg 5]of the fertile Devonian hills. On this side of the promontory there was the original fishing village, a row of ancient thatched cabins built against the cliff, and that popular house of entertainment, the Ring of Bells, a low-roofed, old-fashioned dwelling, with steep gables and curious abutments and ceilings whose rough-hewn beams scarcely cleared the heads of its tallest customers.

The person whose approach commanded the general attention was a man of somewhat striking appearance. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a head nobly mounted on the throat of a gladiator, penetrating black eyes, boldly-cut features, a swarthy complexion, a square lower jaw, and a capacious strongly-marked brow—he was a man to attract attention anywhere. Intellect and power had set their seal upon his face, and his bearing was that of one accustomed to command. A man of superior mind, stranded for life in such a place as Combhaven, might naturally think himself a king.

The new-comer’s costume was that of the yeoman class. He wore knee-breeches, coarse gray knitted stockings, and stout buckled shoes. His only distinguishing [Pg 6]characteristic was a white cravat, but this was a symbol which marked his power and authority over that little group of rough fishermen; and Mrs. Jakes, the landlady, who stood at her door listening to the discourse of her customers, dropped a low curtsy at sight of the man in the white neckcloth.

Joshua Haggard was a strong influence in the little town of Combhaven, being chief custodian of the souls of its inhabitants, from Miss Tremaine, the rich maiden lady at Tremaine Place, to the grubby kitchen-wench at the Ring of Bells, who cleaned herself once a week, and, with face smarting from the vigorous application of mottled soap and coarsest huckaback, went to Little Bethel to hear Mr. Haggard preach. It was over the womankind of Combhaven, doubtless, that Joshua was most potent; but the men, if they went to any place of worship, did it for the most part to please their womankind; and thus was Little Bethel crowded to overflowing on warm summer evenings; while the white-haired vicar of Combhaven preached his drowsy orthodox sermon to the school-children, the [Pg 7]pew-opener and beadle, and the half-dozen stanch followers of the Established Church who had not overeaten themselves at dinner, or drank too much after that ponderous and hearty meal.

Fifty years ago the Established Church was nowhere in Combhaven, as compared with Joshua Haggard and Little Bethel. The great Anglican revival has doubtless awakened that slumberous old parish church into new life and vigour, and left Little Bethel in the rear; but in those days Bethel was dominant, and to sit under Joshua was to be in the right away to salvation, in the opinion of Combhaven; always excepting certain old families of landed estate, and the more substantial of the tenant-farmers, who clung to the Established Church like barnacles to a ship’s bottom, and with little more ability to reason upon their faith than the barnacles. They stuck to the Church of England chiefly because their fathers had done so, and they looked down upon Joshua as a ranter, and follower of that low person, John Wesley.

Mr. Haggard had his temporal avocation and business in life as well as his spiritual profession, [Pg 8]and a man of less energy and intellect would have hardly fared so well as he did with both. The business he had inherited from his father. His clerical position he had made for himself. He had received no collegiate education; he was a member of no convocation. If he followed any other light than his own it was assuredly that lamp which John Wesley lighted nearly a century earlier; yet the Wesleyans would have disowned Joshua Haggard. Early in life he had taken to field-preaching, and had made as great an impression upon his benighted hearers as Whitfield made in the woods near Bristol. When his father died, reconciled to his only son at the last, and leaving Joshua his business and a nice little lump of money in the bargain, Joshua built himself a chapel, and settled down after his wanderings in his native town. He belonged rather to the order of Primitive Methodists, founded by Vincent Bourne, than to any other denomination; but he was a man

of more original mind and broader views than are common to Methodist preachers, and a loving student of the old Puritan Divines.

Haggard’s was one of the best shops in Combhaven. [Pg 9]Ostensibly devoted to groceries, it gave a counter to linen-drapery, supplied its customers with stationery, and was generally willing to procure any article that might be wanted in Combhaven from the larger resources of Barnstaple or the illimitable storehouses of Exeter. Enthusiast as Joshua really was in religion, he never neglected his trade; order and attention marked the conduct of his business; a scrupulous honesty recommended him even to careful housekeepers. No adulterated coffee, no sanded sugar, came from his stores; to say that any article came from Haggard’s was tantamount to saying it was the best that money could buy. Haggard’s eight shilling mixed tea was a specific for nervous headache, and for plasters in urgent cases no one thought of using any mustard but Haggard’s.

Joshua being a widower of some years’ standing, the feminine element in the business was supplied by his maiden sister Judith, a woman of commercial mind, frugal housewifely habits, and energy as inexhaustible as her brother’s. She was of Joshua’s temperament as regarded mundane things, but lacked his loftier aspirations and spiritual views. Piety [Pg 10]with her was of rather a mechanical order, dependent upon the number of her attendances at church. She took an ascetic view of life, especially as regarded the lives of other people, and was continually cutting off some small enjoyment or gratification of mind or senses as ‘a snare.’ She was the sole and despotic ruler of Joshua’s household and family, the family consisting of one son and one daughter, the household of a sturdy maid-of-all-work, a shopman, and a boy who carried out goods in barrow or basket, and occasionally came to grief by upsetting a box of eggs or breaking a vinegar-bottle.

Joshua Haggard’s house and garden were always the pink of neatness, his shop was a model of cleanliness and precision; and his life altogether was so wisely ordered, so temperate, regular, and honourable, that he himself seemed the highest example of that sober Christian life he preached to others. When he read the first Psalm, in that rich sonorous voice of his, his congregation thought of him as the man whose ‘delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.

[Pg 11]

‘And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

‘The ungodly are not so—’

Ah, with what pious unction, with what a triumphant sense of superiority, with what confidence and security against the possibility of temptation assailing him, used Joshua Haggard to roll out the denunciatory verses that follow!

The minister, as Joshua was called in Combhaven, did not come to the Ring of Bells to drink or make merry. He was the most sober of men, without being an absolute abstainer, and, except a mug of small-beer with his dinner and supper, rarely tasted anything stronger than water. He came to the water-side tavern to reprove and exhort. Mrs. Jakes had absented herself from chapel for the last two Sabbaths, and this backsliding was a fact to be inquired into by a shepherd solicitous for the welfare of his flock.

‘The Saturday nights have been so trying, Mr. [Pg 12]Haggard,’ replied Mrs. Jakes to her pastor’s grave remonstrance. ‘The fishermen will sit so late and get so quarrelsome. It’s enough to make one feel tired and addled-like next morning.’

‘If you were more careful of the good of your soul than of filthy lucre, Mrs. Jakes, you wouldn’t let the men stay late enough to tire you, or drink enough to get quarrelsome.’

‘Ah,’ sighed the landlady, with a doleful shake of her head; ‘it’s lucky for they as was brought up to a virtuous business. I was brought up to mine by they as went before me, and I’m obliged to abide by it.’

‘Put it away, if you find it a snare, Mrs. Jakes. Put it away, if you see that it leads others to evil ways. Selling drink to the intemperate is like going into partnership with Satan. Dissolve the firm, my dear woman, and put your trust in God.’

‘I might do that, Mr. Haggard; but how should I face the tax-gatherer, or the brewer’s man, or the old Squire’s bailiff when he calls for my rent?’

‘Have you forgotten how the sparrows are cared for, Mrs. Jakes?’

[Pg 13]

‘Ah, sir, it’s well for the sparrows; yet I’ve seen a many o’ they tumble out of their nests, poor things. Sparrows is made without much sense, and there’d need be somebody to look after ’em. But I fancy Providence meant us to do for ourselves, and do the best we can in the business we’re brought up to.’

‘You remind me of the young man in the Gospel, Mrs. Jakes, who went away sorrowful because he clung to his great riches.’

‘It isn’t riches as I cling to, Mr. Haggard. It’s bread-and-cheese. The leopard might as easy change his spots as I go out of the public line; and if I could take to another business maybe my neighbours wouldn’t like it. You wouldn’t care to see me open a grocer’s shop, now, would ’ee, sir?’

Joshua Haggard smiled—a comfortable self-assured smile. He knew that his business was established upon a basis not easily assailable. Plenty of capital, shrewd judgment, long experience, unflinching industry, and the special protection of Providence. Who should prevail against these?

[Pg 14]

‘Look,’ cried Jabez Long, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and pointing to the livid horizon line. ‘Look, lads, there she be—the Dolfing.’

A patch of white sail—ghastly white against the leaden sky—glimmered on the edge of the sea. All eyes turned to it in anxious if not affrighted scrutiny. Poor struggling sail, how it wavered and dipped, now vanishing, now reappearing! It was like a human soul battling with the troubled waters of sorrow and sin.

The wind had risen while Joshua Haggard had been standing just inside the stone-paved kitchen discoursing the words of wisdom to Mrs. Jakes—a mighty wind that came shrieking up from the sea, and swept over the fertile hills, and into the wooded gorges, like an evil spirit intent upon the ruin of mankind.

But the wind was not yet at its worst, for far away to seaward a line of foam showed like a white rift between the black darkness of sky and sea. Well did the fishermen know what this portended. A heavy squall was coming.

‘He ought to ha’ stayed at Clovelly,’ said Mike [Pg 15]Durran; ‘none but a madman would sail in yon cockleshell with a gale coming. Why, she’ll be swamped by the sea, or have the mast taken clean out of her and be druv on they rocks. That there boat’ll be smashed like a nutshell agen they rocks if he don’t take care.’

‘He’s a good sailor, isn’t he?’ asked Joshua Haggard.

‘Good sailor! ay, to be sure. If he warn’t he’d never be able to manage the boat as he is doing with such a sea running. There isn’t a better in these parts. He and his brother allus hankered after the sea. But if he don’t get too much of it this time, I’m a Dutchman.’

There was a coolness in the speech that astonished Mr. Haggard; but life is cheap on these rocky shores, and a man drowned, more or less, makes no great sensation. The young Squire was no favourite with these fishermen. He was reserved, and they gave him credit for pride. He felt the restraint and injustice of his position as the son of a miserly father. He had nothing to give his fellow-men, and was thought mean.

[Pg 16]

‘What!’ exclaimed Joshua; ‘do you think that boat is in danger?’

‘Ay, danger enough,’ answered Jabez. ‘See, the squall is a’most upon her. If we see her agen when it clears, I shall be surprised.’

Nearer and nearer to the Dolphin came that line of white foam with its black background of wind and rain. Another moment and it was on her. They could see her heel over to the first gust of the storm. The next instant the white sail vanished.

‘She is gone!’ exclaimed Haggard.

‘No; but the mast has gone—snapped off like a carrot. Nothing can save her now. She will be swept on the rocks, and the sea will make short work of her.’

‘And you stand here quietly, smoking and drinking, while a fellow-creature’s life is in jeopardy—you—seamen!’

The squall which had settled the fate of the Dolphin was by this time upon them, the blinding rain driving into their eyes, so that they could hardly distinguish anything to seaward. What they could see was not encouraging, for the huge waves came [Pg 17]leaping up the beach, roaring and hissing at them like sea-monsters thirsting for their blood.

Most of their boats were securely hauled up on the beach, above the estuary of a small stream that falls into the sea a short distance from the town. Thus they might launch them with safety; but could they, dare they, pull out to sea in the teeth of the wind, and in such a sea? And even if they did, could they be in time? The Dolphin was drifting fast towards the reef. Would it not be a useless hazard of their lives?

The fishermen looked at each other, and then at Joshua Haggard, doubtfully. They were none of them young men—declined into the vale of years rather, and much weather-beaten.

‘We’ve wives and families to think about,’ said Durran. ‘They’re o’ more account to us than the young Squire.’

‘A deal we should get by it if we risked our lives to bring the Dolfing safe ashore,’ added Jabez.

‘And you would see a fellow-creature perish!’ cried Haggard, horrified at this inhumanity. These were of his flock; it was to these he preached the [Pg 18]gospel—self-abnegation, love of one’s neighbour—sometimes of a Sunday evening.

‘No talk of perishing yet a while,’ said one.

‘He ought to ha’ stayed at Clovelly,’ said another.

Joshua Haggard arched his hands above his eyes and looked out seaward. The squall had spent its force, though it was still blowing furiously. The rain which had been driven before the blast had cleared off, and the Dolphin was to be seen, a black spot upon the troubled sea. To leeward of her, between her and the spot on which they were standing, a line of black rocks and seething foam denoted the reef which ran from the point at the west of the bay into the sea. It was a narrow ledge of rocks, which was uncovered at low water, terminating in one larger and higher than the rest, which showed its head above water even in the highest tides. Now the tide was nearly out, and the whole line of reef could occasionally be seen as the huge waves rose and fell, inky black against the white foam which covered the reef, and streamed over the leeward side like a cataract.

[Pg 19]

A little to the westward of the Ring of Bells, and close to the rocks at the point, a single boat was hauled up. It had been a merchant vessel’s dingey. Small and old, but yet strong, it could be launched under the shelter of the cliff into almost smooth water. Joshua glanced at the dingey, then at the Dolphin, which was drifting fast to her fate.

‘I can handle a pair of sculls with any man in Combhaven,’ he said; ‘lend me your dingey and a coil of rope, Jabez.’

‘What! ye’re not going out in the teeth o’ such a wind, Master Haggard?’ cried Long.